Blog posts

Early this summer, TIME.com asked the Center for Plain Language to evaluate some online privacy notices, using the types of assessment we use for our ClearMark awards and our Federal Plain Language Report Card. I took the lead on the project and learned some great lessons along the way. TIME.com published the article in August.The project The Center evaluated online privacy notices for Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, Twitter, and Uber. We used two assessment methods to determine how easy or difficult the notices are to understand: an algorithm-based tool called Acrolynx, and human judges—all plain-language experts. Using Acrolynx, we measured sentence length, words per sentence, use of complex versus simple words, active voice, and a variety of other factors. The judges looked at some of the same aspects, but also looked at style, organization and structure, audience needs, and other factors. The computer’s and the judges’ conclusions were quite consistent. While all of the companies could use some plain-language lessons, Google was the clear winner, with Facebook not far behind. The clear losers were Lyft and Twitter, whose policies generated comments like, "This privacy policy is what makes plain language people like us still have jobs." In the middle, with some successes and some failures, were LinkedIn, Apple, and Uber.The experts Former and current Center for Plain Language board members did most of the work. Kath Straub, Ph.D., of Usability.org, carried out the Acrolynx piece of our assessment. Kath uses the psychology of behavior to help clients better understand, motivate, and communicate with their customers. Judges included Deborah Bosley, Ph.D., with The Plain Language Group. Deborah has a 20-year history in the plain-language community, working with Fortune 100/500 companies, government, attorneys, and nonprofits. Meghan Codd Walker is a writer and content expert with Zuula Consulting. She works with a variety of businesses but specializes in the financial services industry. Jeff Greer is a digital content specialist with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. He focuses on using plain language and simple interactions that help consumers make sense of health insurance. The judges did not communicate during the judging, but they reached surprisingly similar conclusions about the policies.The lessons Rankings aside, this project holds some great lessons for those who are willing to see them. Although there are probably more lessons, here are the ones that reached me.First, people in the plain-language community are incredibly generous with their time, talents, and resources. The experts went above and beyond the call of duty to help with this project. Their willingness to help merely confirmed what I've known for over a decade: the plain-language community is committed to helping anyone and everyone communicate more clearly. Second, being big doesn't mean you always use your resources wisely. The project involved seven of the most successful companies on the Internet. They clearly have the resources to communicate clearly if that’s their goal. Most of them probably want to. But the more subtle takeaway is this: Lots of people think they know how to communicate clearly, but they don't. The same companies that spend massive amounts of money hiring top-of-their-game programmers, accountants, PR firms, and myriad other experts may not yet understand that clear communication is a specialized field. Believing your people can write doesn't mean they can, and it doesn’t mean your users will understand. Short sentences, active voice, and all of the other plain-language guidelines can go a long way. But if you don't have an expert—a true expert—helping you at least a little, you're wasting your resources. Third, whether you're good or bad at this, you can improve. The real losers will rest on their laurels (“We were at the top of the list, so we’re fine”) or dig their heels in (“These judges know nothing about our company . . . or our efforts . . . or our users . . . or the law, or . . .” ). The real winners will embrace this incredibly valuable information and use it to improve the way they communicate with the people who are making their companies great: users. Surprisingly, only one company has reached out to the Center (so far) to learn more. Between the Center's free resources and impressive list of consultants, anyone who wants to communicate clearly can do so. The last lesson is, perhaps, the most important. The subtle undercurrent flowing through the judges’ comments (and evident in the public’s ongoing outcry for plain language) is this: companies that don't use plain language don’t care about their customers, clients, readers, or users. Judges consistently commented that some policy language showed the companies’ respect and a desire for users to understand, while other language communicated disrespect, and even a deliberate desire that users not read the policies. Plain language is a powerful communication tool, but content is just one part of the communication. The more subtle message behind a company's language and document design is either, "We value you," or "We just want your money."​

One of my professional roles is to teach legal writing. And in spite of what you might think, most of us who teach legal writing try to teach law students to use plain language (to some degree or another). But term after term, I’m dismayed at the final assignments’ lack of plain language. So what’s standing in the way? I’ve identified 5 obstacles here, although I’m sure there are others. Whether you’re a plain-language coach, some other kind of teacher, or someone who’s just trying to get people to climb on the plain-language train, maybe some of the suggestions here will help. Although some of them focus on legal writing, I’m sure you can draw analogies to your own field.

1. People write what they read

In law school, students must read. A lot. And then a lot more. Primarily, they read mountains of awful legal writing from decades ago. And because they want to be lawyers, they emulate these judges’ writing. I’m confident it’s the same in other professions. No matter how much we preach plain language in the classroom, students have read thousands of pages of legal writing (or medical writing or accounting writing . . .). So that’s what they emulate—especially when those writers are distinguished judges, and I’m “just” a professor.

I’ve had slight success with a couple of strategies. First, we talk about how a person becomes a judge: there’s not a writing test. So judicial opinions aren’t necessarily the best examples of good legal writing. Second, I try to get them to put themselves into the reader’s shoes. This is relatively easy for them; they readily admit that they hate traditional legal writing. They wish someone would spell it out in plain language! Third, I show them the data. In study after study, lawyers and judges have chosen plain-language documents over those written in legalese. These strategies won’t bring everyone around, but they help.

2. People hide what they don’ t know

Often—maybe more often than not—the people you’re trying to convert to plain language don’t really know what they want to say. They’re winging it. If they use long sentences, big words, and imprecise language, maybe no one will discover the flaws. I think of this category as “the emperor has no clothes” syndrome. It’s an epidemic. Sometimes, the writer is just lazy. In my experience, though, it’s more likely that the writer ran out of time or got stuck and doesn’t know how to take the next steps.

You can only combat this if your reader is willing to step up and do some more work. Sometimes you can make it less painful by asking ever-so-gentle questions: “I’m not sure what you mean here. Does this mean x or does it mean y?” Or maybe you show some interest: “I never thought about it that way before. Could you tell me more about this point?” In other words, if you’re willing to identify some of the ambiguities and lack of necessary detail, you just might help the writer see what to do next.

3. People are creatures of habit

How many papers did you write in high school and college? How many of those papers came with an instruction like this: “Minimum length is __ pages”? How many of you got very good at stretching a little bit of information into the minimum number of pages? Of course the minimum page limit was designed to require a certain depth of treatment. But that’s not the message most students receive. And sadly, the students who are the best “fillers” tend to get the best grades. (That’s a personal opinion, unsupported by data, by the way. But you know who I’m talking about!)

My students (and yours) have trained themselves for years to write this way: lots of prepositional phrases, passive voice, unnecessary “hedging” clauses (at the beginning, middle, and end of most sentences). Frankly, I do the same thing. I’ve finally given up my goal of writing in plain language. Instead, I’m happy to revise to plain language. This, in fact, is my most effective teaching strategy: rather than trying to beat bad writing habits out of them, I try to beat multiple (mandatory) revisions into them—a new habit. It’s also important to get them to compare the first draft to the last draft. Do it enough times, and you have a chance of getting through.

4. Plain writing is hard

I don’t know if this obstacle or obstacle #5 is the hardest to overcome. Maybe it depends on the writer. Regardless, those of us in the plain-language field already know that it’s not easy to write in plain language. Even when we’re committed to writing for the reader, it’s often tough to imagine that reader and how he or she will receive what we’re writing. It’s far easier to simply write what makes sense to us, and then to expect others to get it because we understand what we meant.

One of the challenges here is in the name itself: plain language (or plain writing or any number of other labels). If the language is plain, shouldn’t it be easy to write? Of course, we know better. But it’s tough to convince others that what we do is difficult (especially when some of the other 5 obstacles are at play).

The most effective strategy I’ve found is to simply hunker down with the writer and start doing the work. A person can only appreciate the work that goes into this task by doing the task. Sooner or later, you’ll get the “this is a lot harder than I thought it would be” response.

5. People think they’re good writers

Do you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect? Bryan Garner brought attention to it in the legal world through his ABA Journal blog earlier this year (“Bryan Garner on Words”). The Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability to recognize their [own] ineptitude."

Apparently, it’s prevalent in the legal profession: lawyers think they’re great writers. And perhaps the worse they are, the better they believe they are. Crazy, eh? These individuals also fail to recognize others’ superior skills—like their colleagues’ skills . . . or yours. It’s tough to win the plain-language fight in that environment.

Reaching success with these people requires more than teaching them to use plain language: First, you have to get them to see that they’re not the great writers that they believe themselves to be. The best way to accomplish this is to provide a lot of feedback—and not from just you. In a classroom, guided peer review can be an effective tool. In the real world, it can help to get customer or client feedback: Take one of the writer’s “unplain” documents and ask clients to answer some questions about the content. In other words, do some testing.

These 5 obstacles to teaching others to use plain language can be overcome. But those of us in this field of work know how challenging it can be. If you have strategies that work (or other obstacles), please pass them along, or submit your own blog—we’d love to consider it for a future column!

Ah. Those pesky rules. If everyone would simply follow them, all would be well. It’s not that easy, is it? But why not? Because context matters. For example, plenty of people reading this are thinking, “What kind of expert are you? You’re not even writing proper sentences! ‘Ah.’ isn’t a sentence! ‘Those pesky rules.’ isn’t a sentence! How can you hold yourself out as an expert if you don’t even follow the most basic rules of writing?” But others will agree that ignoring the basic rules was perfectly justified in that first paragraph. Ignoring the rules shapes the style—it adds a certain tone or even personality. And if we can’t play with tone, style, and personality in a blog, where can we?But was I ignoring the rules? Or will some of you say that my sentences fall within exceptions to the traditional sentence rules—in other words, that a different rule applies? Does it even matter? Writing is both objective and subjective. It is science and art. “Good” writing is both measurable and amorphous. This is why plain language is hard. And this is why we need to stop quibbling quite so much about rules. I’ve read a great deal of writing that followed all of the rules but was still awful . . . it was still difficult to understand, even when the subject matter was straightforward.Sometimes the most concise sentence doesn’t convey meaning as well as a more complex sentence. Sometimes the passive voice is easier to read and understand, even when it falls outside the usual exceptions to the rule that says we should use the active voice. There’s an ongoing debate in the plain-language world over the value of reading-level scores. Some would argue that they provide the definitive answer to whether a document is in plain language, but most of us can find abundant examples to the contrary.The longer I’m in this line of work, the more I realize that we will—and should—continue to try to quantify good writing, but that no matter how much we learn, rules can only go so far. Language is a living, breathing part of the human experience, we need to be willing to bend those rules, ignore them, and even throw them away from time to time.At the Clarity2014 conference in Antwerp, Josiah Fisk gave an evocative talk on the need to trust the judgment of experts, empirical data be damned. (I’m paraphrasing and probably overstating his case. Sorry, Si.) Karen Shriver gave an impassioned rebuttal, stressing the value and importance of the science of communication. They are both right. In practice, I daresay they epitomize the importance of both approaches: Josiah’s expertise is built on an enviable understanding of the science, and Karen is an incredibly gifted communications artist.My point is this: Let’s relax just a bit on the rules. I don’t say this lightly. I am a rule follower. I’m proud of it. I have my favorite rules, and I want everyone to follow them. But I also shun a few purported rules, and I want everyone to stop pushing them. Double standards? Guilty.